


See Or Seem

by nayanroo



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2008), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, Heather Douglas (Moondragon), interrupting Peter Quill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 10:45:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nayanroo/pseuds/nayanroo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath, moments of peace for any member of the Guardians are few and far apart.  Sometimes, when they come, they're more heartbreaking than reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See Or Seem

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Femslash February, because I just finished reading Guardians of the Galaxy and was overwhelmed by feels. Beta'd by Ammay. Title taken from an Edgar Allen Poe quote.

"I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time.”  
 _-A.A. Milne, Winnie and the Pooh_

*

She bolted upright, the sheets twisted around her legs so that in that moment of haze between wakefulness and sleep, she felt _trapped_ , and her heart beat wildly until she could kick the thin fabric off sweat-sticky skin and away toward the foot of the bed. The darkness in her quarters on Knowhere was deep and complete, and as she struggled up to an elbow Heather felt like she was staring into the blackness of space, or the Fault, or some shadowy place beyond the Fault. Whether it was a room in a station or a tear in the fabric of space itself, it was infinite and full of terrors. 

She ran a hand over her head, feeling the beginnings of stubble there – she’d have to make sure to take care of that in the morning – and heaved a sigh as she closed her eyes and rolled onto her back. Thinking about all that wasn’t going to help her get back to sleep, and with everything going on now, she was going to need her rest.

An arm snaked over her waist, and a moment later warm breath drifted across her throat, a very familiar body pressing itself along her side. “S’got you up?” came a sleepy mumble. With a fond smile, Heather reached up and stroked her fingers through short, silvery hair, still staring up into the darkness that covered the metal of the ceiling.

“Dreams,” she replied. Beside her, Phyla-Vell shifted, chin pressing into her shoulder. Fingers, strong fingers with a delicate touch, described a shallow arc along her abdomen.

“Just dreams?”

Heather sighed. “Nightmares,’ she clarified. “I guess it’s pointless to hide things from you.”

“Don’t know why you would try.” Phyla shifted when Heather nudged her with an elbow, moving just enough to allow an arm to loop around her shoulders. She was so comfortingly solid, so tangible, and in the face of that kind of reassurance Heather began to relax. “What were they about?”

She shivered a bit, and not just because of Phyla’s touches or the chilly air of the station on her sweaty skin, for here alone with the woman she loved she could be honest. The nightmares had been vivid and real, and even thinking about them made them coalesce before her eyes, writhing dark things with too many tentacles and blind, unseeing eyes and teeth the length of her whole body, slavering and slobbering their way out of a star-bright rip in the universe. As she opened her mouth to speak the words jammed in her throat as the darkness itself took on shape and form and grinned at her from the corners of her room, and Heather froze, shaking.

Soft lips caught her mouth, palms cupping her cheeks and turning her head and Heather squeezed her eyes shut and buried her fingers in her lover’s hair, kissing her back with desperate fervor. Phyla wiggled on top of her, and though she grimaced a little at the sticky slick sweat that hadn’t yet dried, the press of skin on skin, the feel of Phyla’s legs tangling around and between her own made her forget the terror. _Real, real_ , her skin told her, _this is real_. _This is real_ , said her heart. _Not the nightmares._

“Shhh,” Phyla murmured, her lips brushing Heather’s when they pulled apart. Fingertips stroked her cheeks, her eyebrows, brushed the top of her head and down along the outer shell of her ears. “Shhh, you don’t have to tell me. It’s all right, I’m here, and I love you.”

So long, and those words hadn’t yet failed to make her smile. They didn’t now, not when Heather knew the echo of them in Phyla’s mind so well and could feel them unspoken every time their lips met, until Heather twisted her fingers into pale hair and held Phyla into a long kiss. She could feel the words in the way Phyla’s hands stroked down her neck, over her breasts, in the way calloused thumbs brushed teasingly light over her nipples and down…

Heather drew in a hissing breath, almost a gasp, and Phyla paused, partway down her throat, her fingers just at the apex of her thighs. With her eyes barely opened Heather could see the rumpled mess of her lover’s hair just at the edge of her vision, but she didn’t need to see to slip a hand down and curve it over Phyla’s, arching her hips into the touch so it finally brushed where she wanted it. Phyla smiled against her skin and Heather did too, a breathy laugh bubbling up. She wanted this, _needed_ this affirmation of life – real life, not the deathless kind – in the face of everything that had happened.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked. Phyla _chuckled_ when she circled Heather’s clit with the tip of her thumb, and the sound of it sparked along her nerves right behind the rush of pleasure, a wash of warmth chasing away the chill of space.

“Waiting to see if you were gonna fall asleep on me,” Phyla hummed, the dim light glinting in her eyes between stray locks of hair. “Hasn’t been three standard hours since we went to sleep.”

Heather arched again as Phyla’s thumb circled again, reaching down with a hand to stroke hair back from her face, gathering it in her fingers and digging in. “Well, I’m _not_ sleepy anymore, love.”

“Good. I want to make the most of it.” Her tongue dipped into Heather’s navel, fingers sliding between her labia. Practice and long familiarity made her sure, but none of it was lost on Heather at all, not when Phyla was pressing two fingers inside her, rocking them slowly. Heather dug her toes into the mattress, squirming, and Phyla placed a last kiss above the small patch of dark, curly hair at the apex of her thighs.

“I don’t want to waste the time I have with you,” she whispered, and bent her head.

It was all light and color for a moment, warmth and the thoughts in Phyla’s mind – desire and pleasure and love and comfort and _home_ , surface thoughts that ran all the way down. Heather’s eyes rolled back into her head and she bucked against her lover’s tongue. Phyla might have been no great orator, but she put her tongue to _excellent_ use now. 

Part of it was that they were so at ease with each other, and knew each other’s bodies. Phyla knew; she knew just how to curve her fingers, rocking them inside Heather, she knew how to use her tongue and the lightest scrapes of her teeth to bring her lover to the edge. Times like these made Heather wonder which one of them was the telepath, such was the ease with which Phyla could read her body and her reactions. Quick movements with the tip of her tongue to bring Heather to the edge, panting and - _Pama, whimpering_ \- and tightening her hands in Phyla’s hair so much it had to hurt. Then, when she had come hard, crying out, it would be long strokes with the flat of her tongue until she’d spiraled back down.

They did this over and over again, until every ounce of terror was cleansed from her mind, until the shadows seemed brighter for the star-lights dancing across her vision, until Phyla’s ministrations could elicit no more than a hoarse whine from her throat. When the other woman finally raised her head and slid her fingers out, closing red, swollen lips around them to suck them clean, Heather could not muster the energy to raise her head for a better look. Phyla’s chin was slick and glistening, and Heather grinned a little when she wiped it inelegantly with the back of her hand. 

“Your turn,” she said, fingers already finding their way between Phyla’s strong legs when she slid up Heather’s body, but instead she felt a hand link fingers with hers, pulling it away.

“I’m not the one who needed the distraction,” Phyla replied, bringing their linked hands in close to her heart as she curled up against Heather’s side again. “I don’t like seeing you so frightened, my love.”

“There’s a lot to be frightened of, now.”

“But nothing here.” Phyla turned her face up and Heather took the hint, kissing her lover’s eyelids and cheeks and her mouth at last, tasting her own particular flavor of salty sweetness on Phyla’s lips.

“No, nothing here,” she agreed. The things beyond Knowhere – the Fault and Magus and everything else – those things didn’t have a place here, couldn’t grow where love was. Fear out there was healthy. It kept her alive. But here, with Phyla’s hand tight in hers and the two of them, skin to skin…

Phyla murmured something, and Heather came back to herself. “What was that?”

“I said it must be almost time to wake up.”

Heather sat up in bed.

The darkness of her room in Knowhere wasn’t absolute; the glow of display panels and the room’s dimmed light sources made it so only the deepest corners had shadows pooled in them. She didn’t need the light to know what she’d see when she looked, though. A hand slid over the side of the bed that was cold as terror, frozen as space. That side of the bed hadn’t been warm in a long time.

“ _Moondragon?_ ”

She reached for the comm, thumbing it on. “I read you, Peter.”

“ _What took you?_ ”

“Dreams.” Her fingers clenched in the sheets before she made them relax, made herself put aside the dream and focus on the reality, the next inter-universal crisis that needed resolution. She would have time to grieve later, in private, but for now she could not let herself be distracted. “Just dreams.”


End file.
